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Personal Pronouns

Personal Pronouns: Meaning, Types and Examples

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Hello learners! Welcome. The concept of Personal pronouns is one of the most important concepts in the whole parts of speech. If you are a student of English grammar, this is the chapter you must master in order to easily grasp other chapters and concepts. We all know that a pronoun is a word that is used instead of a noun. There are many types of pronouns such as personal pronouns, relative pronouns, possessive pronouns, reflexive pronouns, and interrogative pronouns, etc. In this article, we are going to learn about the meaning, types, and example sentences of personal pronouns.

Personal Pronouns

Personal Pronouns – Meaning and Types

Every sentence consists of two important parts. The speaker (or) the subject, the person spoken about (or) the object. These two are indicated by personal pronouns in the sentence. There are three types of personal pronouns.

  1. The first person is the pronoun that talks about the subject/ the speaker where the self is the one included in the discussion. I and We comprise the first person.
  2. The second person denotes the person that is spoken to. You is the example of second person.
  3. The third person is the person that is spoken of. He, She, It, and They are the examples of the Third person.

The Nominative and the Objective Case

Every personal pronoun can be expressed in two cases, i.e., the nominative and the Objective case. We use the nominative case when the pronoun is the subject of the sentence. We use the objective case when the pronoun is the object.

The following table describes the two cases for all the personal pronouns:

Nominative Case (Singular/ Plural) Objective Case (Singular/ Plural)
I, We Me, Us
You, You You.
He, She, It, They Him, Her, It, Them

Examples of the nominative case include:

  • He goes for a stroll in the park every day.
  • They are getting ready to attend the function.
  • She received the honorary doctorate from the Vice-chancellor.

Some Examples of the Objective case are as follows:

  • The doctor advised me to rest well.
  • The lecturer gave us some work to do.
  • I asked her to give me some time to finish the project.

Multiple Pronouns and How to Use them

If more than one pronoun is involved, it is important to split the sentence into two parts and decide the correct pronoun to use. For example,

He, she, and I went shopping. (In this sentence, there are three pronouns. So, in order to use the correct pronoun form, it becomes easy if you split those sentences and determine the right form- He went shopping, she went shopping, I went shopping.

Justin went to the movies with her and me. (In this case, We cannot use she and I as the pronouns, because after splitting the sentence as- Justin went to the movies with her, Justin went to the movies with me. Hence, the objective case is used.

Some more examples of Personal Pronouns:

  • I gave them a letter written by her. 
  • He asked if he could join us.
  • Kumar and his friends went to the pool.
  • It was me in the background of the photo.

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Gender Pronouns – Types and Examples

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Hello reader! Welcome. In this article, we are going to discuss everything related to the concept of Gender Pronouns. This is one of the concepts that is gaining a lot of importance in the recent past, thanks to the gender-neutral pronoun concept. Before proceeding, let us first see what a Gender pronoun is.

Gender Pronoun

Gender Pronouns

We all know that a Pronoun is a word that we use instead of a noun. For example, the pronoun indicates a subject which maybe I, we, You, He, She, It, and they or an object which may be my, our, us, his, hers, and them. Gender is the sex of the subject that’s being talked about. A gender pronoun is a pronoun that indicates particular sex.

In the English language, the masculine gender has the pronoun his, the feminine gender her, the neutral genders they/their/ze, zir, hir, etc. Sometimes the person decides what pronoun they choose for themselves.

Some examples of Gender Pronouns are as follows

  1. Martina drove her car to the airport.
  2. the team members went to their respective places.
  3. Christine ate hir lunch at 1 PM. (Some people do not wish to be associated with any gender and those people wish to be associated with a gender-free pronoun).
  4. My name was at the top of the list.
  5. What are your items among these?

In English, while talking about pronouns, it is important to use the correct gender pronoun because gender is one of the things which people take seriously. Nowadays, due to the increasing awareness of the LGBTQ community and rights, it is absolutely essential to be gender-sensitive and be sensitive and respectful of the other’s gender. That is the reason for the additional number of pronouns other than he/him/his, she/her/hers and they/them/theirs. If you’re not really sure of the other person’s gender, it is important to politely ask so that the person might not feel disrespected.

Gender Pronouns of the Personal Pronouns

In the English language, there are seven personal pronouns. They are I, We, You, He, She, It, and They. These seven denote the three persons of pronouns. I and We constitute the first person, ‘You’ is the second person and he, she, it, and they are in the third person. Among these, only the third person constitutes gender pronouns. They are the following:

Feminine Singular She, her, Hers, Herself
Masculine Singular He, Him, his, Himself
Third-person neutral singular It, Its, Itself
Third-person neutral plural They, Them, Their, Theirs, Themselves

Some More Examples of Gender Pronouns

  1. John and Claire told us that they are coming over for dinner. (Pronoun gender – neutral)
  2. I love Barack Obama. He is my favorite leader. (Pronoun gender – masculine)
  3. The dog is wagging its tail. (Pronoun gender – neutral)
  4. The prime minister is doing everything at her disposal to make this happen. (Pronoun gender – feminine)
  5. Greed is a dangerous thing and no one should be consumed by it. (Pronoun gender – neutral)

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